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| Matthew Gunther |
A Republican-led Congressional committee says a scientist and top advisor to Anthony Fauci used his personal email to hide evidence related to the origins of COVID-19.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, sent a letter to the National Emerging Infectious Disease Institute asking for more information about these communications.
“The Select Subcommittee is now aware of potential further attempts by Dr. [David] Morens to subvert public transparency,” the letter said. “Specifically, the Select Subcommittee has been made aware of alleged communications between Dr. Morens and you regarding EcoHealth Alliance.
“These communications included emails from Dr. [David] Morens' personal Gmail account to you and Dr. Peter Daszak of EcoHealth,” the letter adds.
Critics say the use of a personal email account allowed Morens to avoid having his emails obtained by official records requests.
At least some of the email exchanges, handed over by a whistleblower, were with Dr. Peter Daszak, who leads EcoHealth, the controversial research group accused of having a role in the creation of COVID-19.
The federal government has denied the claim that partially taxpayer-funded EcoHealth had a role in COVID’s origin.
EcoHealth is a U.S. nonprofit research company that used taxpayer-funded grants to carry out coronavirus research.
Federal records show that EcoHealth was conducting coronavirus research involving bats in China when the pandemic broke out. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Andy Wong/AP |
Long ago Oscar Wilde cautioned, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” The COVID-19 pandemic is winding down, but the truth about the original source of the virus remains as contentious and elusive as ever.
Experts’ positions have hardened, but at least the facts about the two competing theories are clear enough today for the public to understand, even if the correct theory for the origin of COVID-19 remains uncertain.
The initial and for a time most popular explanation is known as the “zoonotic source” or more commonly, the “animal spillover theory.” This postulates that the virus originated in bats, then spread to an intermediary mammal and then leaped to infect humans. The main support for this theory is that the first cases of COVID-19 were believed to be from a wet food market in Wuhan, China, where many exotic mammals are caged in cramped, unsanitary conditions, conducive to pathogen spread. This aligns with the fact that the majority of pandemics occur due to transmission from animals. Specifically, the other two 21st century pandemics involving related coronaviruses — SARS CoV-1 in 2003 and MERS in 2012 — involved animal to human transmission.
Many virologists and epidemiologists are on record supporting this theory, including Dr. Paul Offit, the noted pediatrician and vaccine expert, who is this country’s leading authority on the history of vaccines. Offit’s opinion carries significant weight, but he has still not backed his opinion with dispositive evidence. The major weakness of the animal spillover theory is that for nearly five years researchers have been testing extensively for the virus in exotic animals such as civets, pangolins and raccoon dogs but to date they have found no evidence of COVID-19 in any of them. Until the virus is isolated in an intermediate host, the animal spillover theory is merely speculative.
The countertheory is that the virus emerged from a laboratory where work on viral transmission was being performed: the lab leak theory. The main support for this theory is that Wuhan, where the virus emerged, is the most important site in Asia for gain-of-function research (viral manipulation that can enhance transmission). The Wuhan virus laboratory is only several miles from the wet market, where the first cases appeared. Also concerning is that genetic analysis shows that the COVID-19 virus contains a binding region, known as a furin cleavage site, with a pattern that rarely occurs in nature. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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